The Measure of a Man

About an hour into their conversation, Carol announced that her headache had disappeared and she'd like to go out as planned. They dined at his favorite restaurant, then headed to a club to dance. That was all it took. Carol, a former Arthur Murray instructor, was as graceful on her feet as he was. "Somewhere between the cha-cha and the Lindy," he writes, "we began to have the feeling that it would be nice to see more of each other."

They went out on 29 of the next 30 nights. Carol said she found him "adorable," and a man with "great lips." In early December, while they were dancing together and a little bit tipsy, she whispered, "You know, we should just get married."

"Fine," he said.

Life together since has been good, although Carol had to make a couple of what she calls "accommodations." The hardest for her was not being able to have children. Six years after they married, she began trying to conceive. For several years after that, she endured various painful interventions, none of which worked. A fertility specialist told Michael and her that his sperm count might be a factor; fat men tend to have a lower number. For Michael, not having children wasn't that big a deal. For Carol, who eventually had a hysterectomy because of fibroid tumors, it was. "It is still what I consider a loss," she said.

Michael gradually realized during these years how hard politics was on a man trying to shed pounds. He had developed sharp political skills that were in demand at the highest levels of political and corporate Washington: making someone feel as if he or she were the only person in the room, paying attention to detail, distilling and delivering big ideas in a few seconds. What he couldn't do was turn down the doughnuts, chips, big steaks and potatoes that are the staple of political life. By the time his first Democratic convention was over, the famous Chicago convention in 1968, his weight exceeded 300 pounds for the first time.

Convention years were tough on the marriage. Michael and Carol first realized this in 1989, on their 25th wedding anniversary. On a visit to the beach, Michael brought Carol a handful of shells, put them on a board and suggested she use them to show how happy she was in their marriage for each of their 25 years. The year 1965 got a big shell; 1968 a little shell; 1984 a shard.

That was the year Walter Mondale lost the election to Ronald Reagan, and Berman weighed 330 pounds. He was wearing a size 58 suit, consuming up to five pounds of red meat a week along with up to 18 eggs. He couldn't walk a city block without panting. He developed sleep apnea, where his body would forget to breathe. Carol told him he looked green. Scared for his health for the first time in his life, he enrolled in a Pritiken Longevity Center in Pennsylvania. He lost 112 pounds -- and that's when he ordered the custom suits.

The Role of Emotions

Berman never again weighed as much as he did in 1984. In 1989, he joined Republican Ken Duberstein -- who had served as Reagan's chief of staff -- in forming the Duberstein Group. He started psychotherapy in 1990 and, several years after that, employed a private nutritionist and trainer.

Still, his weight seesawed. By 1997 -- a year after he was diagnosed with a kidney problem -- he was up to 309 pounds.

In 1998, on the advice of a friend, he started jotting down thoughts and memories about being fat with the idea of writing a book someday. The exercise became, not surprisingly, an obsession. He read scientific reports and researched cultures of the past in which fatness was considered a symbol of wisdom, serenity and wealth. One day he walked into a pharmacy and bought 22 different diet aids, one of everything on the shelf, to investigate how effective they are. His conclusion: They aren't.

He read that for some people, fatness is genetic. But he had researched his family tree; that wasn't true for him. So he began to develop his own theory on why people are fat.

The easy answer, of course, is that they take in more calories than they burn. But then it gets more complicated, he writes. Each person's metabolism is different. He, his sister and his parents all ate a lot of his mother's delicious briskets and lamb chops and none of them exercised much. But he was the only one who got fat.

Emotions, buried for many years, play a role, too. From the age of 4, he sneaked cookies, crackers and anything else he could into his bedroom.

"I could not control my appetite because something was driving me," he writes, "something that was beyond the reach of willpower, outside the realm of reason."

He and his psychologist came to believe that his compulsion started partly as a reaction to his mother. Early in his life, she showed her affection by cooking rich meals and he showed his affection by eating lots of it. As he got older and heftier in early adolescence, she started withholding food and he ate as a way of asserting his emerging will.

Later in life, dropping out of weight-loss programs even though he was losing weight, he had to confront another factor: He was fat-dependent.

Fat was something he could hide behind, an excuse for not doing things that he was afraid of doing. For example, in high school, he felt anxious around girls. By making himself fat and unattractive, he could approach them as potential friends, not girlfriends.

Eventually he had to admit that he was an addict. But unlike alcoholics or drug users, he couldn't go cold turkey.

"The most difficult thing about a food addiction is that you can't give up food," he said at breakfast.

He pulled out a tiny spiral notebook in which he records everything he eats each day and the total calorie count, as well as how much he exercises.

March 1 -- 1,610 calories . March 2 -- 2,295. March 3 -- 2,500. March 4 -- 4,465.

What happened on March 4? He and Carol attended a dinner party at pollster Peter Hart's. He couldn't resist the chocolate cake. "I ate probably eight ounces of chocolate," he admitted. "But I don't beat myself up anymore. I knew I'd be heavier the next morning so the next couple of days I'd be careful."

A couple of years ago, he wouldn't have been so sanguine. But if there was one thing he had learned in writing his book, it was this: "Losing weight is only one aspect of dealing with the reality of being a fat person -- and not necessarily even the most important one. Managing fatness means accepting ourselves as who we are. . . . in short, learning to live a full and satisfying life at whatever weight and size we happen to be."

Two days after Hart's party, he was back down to 1,830 calories.